Microsoft Certified Master

How many of you have heard of this?  This is the new “Premier Technical Credential” from Microsoft.  The program will be required to obtain the Microsoft Certified Architect program. Kind of weird having the “Premier Technical Credential” in there if it is a prerequisite for another cert…but all the same it looks pretty nice.  In fact the only thing it is missing from the MCA is the review board portion.  The Master program is a three week long hands-on training that only takes place in Redmond WA and then you must pass three written exams and a lab-based exam. 

There are currently three speciality areas, Exchange, SQL, and Directory with OCS and SharePoint to be added in the future.  The cost is pretty high.  A $125 non-refundable application fee and then $18,500 program fee (which includes the exams).  Retakes are $250 for the written and $1,500 for the lab.

If you take the first run (beta) of either of the specialities you can get a 50% discount.  Each speciality has it’s own prerequisites that can be found on the links below.

Here are the running times:

Exchange
October 6–October 25, 2008 (50% off)
January 5–January 24, 2009
March 16–April 4, 2009

SQL
October 20–November 8, 2008 (50% off)
January 12–January 31, 2009
March 16–April 4, 2009

Directory
November 3–November 22,2008 (50% off)
February 16–March 6,2009
May 4–May 23, 2009

More info can be found on this blog too.

Good luck to anyone that attends, I wish I could but that cost and time commitment is tough.